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Martin - thanks for sharing the details of the operating sequences and traffic flows, it is absolutely fascinating. Clearly a significant amount of thought and planning has gone into this element of the layout. Mightily impressed as ever :good_mini:

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On 29/07/2019 at 11:54, Martin S-C said:

Then we have the classic Airfix Broadoak


Dsc04823.jpg.2f82512c067aa796bf4965491915b1fd.jpg

 

 

Isn't it always, always the case that after you've finished a model, and photographed it, and cropped and resized the photo and uploaded it that only then do you notice things? The above view reminds me that I really ought to slice off those molded end door grab handles and replace them with wire. Gah.

The interiors need some strapping too...
 

5 hours ago, south_tyne said:

Martin - thanks for sharing the details of the operating sequences and traffic flows, it is absolutely fascinating. Clearly a significant amount of thought and planning has gone into this element of the layout. Mightily impressed as ever :good_mini:

It's keeping me off the streets. This kind of mental gymnastics does tend to stifle real modelling though. There's a pile of Celotex offcuts under the baseboards crying out to be made into lush Gloucestershire landscape that I have hardly touched in a fortnight and my 1/2 complete timber trestle smirks knowingly at me each time I go in the room.

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1 hour ago, Martin S-C said:

It's keeping me off the streets....

 

I think you have missed your calling, you should have been doing this on the full-sized railway!

 

1 hour ago, Martin S-C said:

This kind of mental gymnastics does tend to stifle real modelling though. There's a pile of Celotex offcuts under the baseboards crying out to be made into lush Gloucestershire landscape that I have hardly touched in a fortnight and my 1/2 complete timber trestle smirks knowingly at me each time I go in the room.

 

Mañana mañana :smoke:

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7 minutes ago, south_tyne said:

 

I think you have missed your calling, you should have been doing this on the full-sized railway!

Good gracious no! I couldn't possibly function with all that red tape and six managers watching my every move like hungry vultures. *shudder*

Maybe if I'd been born in 1890 and managed the goods depot of a small country station in somewhere like Radnorshire I think that might have suited me, but then you need to put up with all the horrible facts of life of that era that our rose-tinted nostalgia conveniently brushes aside.

I think I'll stick to managing freight in 4mm scale.

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The Isle of Wight had a special boiler wagon, converted from an LBSC machinery wagon if I remember correctly (my wagon books are inaccessible at the moment). It was used to convey boilers between the works at Ryde and the dock at St Helens, and around the works.

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8 hours ago, south_tyne said:

Mañana mañana

Please! No offensive language.

Some of us have spent years, decades even, dreaming up layout ideas. 

Tomorrow? Nothing so offensive as some in a hurry...

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1 hour ago, Regularity said:

Tomorrow? Nothing so offensive as some in a hurry...

The story goes of a Spaniard who was on holiday on Skye and became interested in the connections between the languages of the Celtic Fringe.  One day he asked an old fisherman on the pier at Portree if there was a word in Gaelic equivalent to the Spanish word mañana, meaning to put something off until tomorrow?  The old fisherman thought for a while and then said "No, no, we don't have a word which conveys quite that degree of urgency".

 

Jim

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8 minutes ago, Caley Jim said:

The story goes of a Spaniard who was on holiday on Skye and became interested in the connections between the languages of the Celtic Fringe.  One day he asked an old fisherman on the pier at Portree if there was a word in Gaelic equivalent to the Spanish word mañana, meaning to put something off until tomorrow?  The old fisherman thought for a while and then said "No, no, we don't have a word which conveys quite that degree of urgency".

 

Jim

 

Apparently in Cornwall someone promising to do something "dreckly" has a similar meaning to mañana without all the rushing around, in Ireland we used to say "time enough".

 

Presumably there were/are similar sayings in the Forest of Dean where there appears to be a strong sense of local identity.

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On 27/07/2019 at 21:10, Harlequin said:

Software would be your friend in all these issues. You could adjust probabilities, add to the number of "cards" at any time, ensure balancing movements, have Sunday workings when more exotic stock is allowed to run, replace out of service wagons with stand-ins, etc. etc...

 

Very much so.

 

Excel would be perfect for the job, I use it for all sorts of Random distribution issues e.g. understanding card distributions at Bridge. Martin if you're familiar with using basic Excel pls PM me if you'd like a little guidance.

 

Colin

 

 

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When I visited the Forest in May for a few days of drinking and eating research, I found that the local shade of Gloucestershire dialect reminded me quite a lot of Zummerzet. There was a gentle laid-back attitude there, and from museum curators and the steam railway guys a kind of "please yourself around the site, just don't do anything silly. Oh, and you can't go over there". 'Over there' being indicated by a random wave of the arm. I was happily shown the locking frame below the floor of the Coleford railway museum signal cabin and had to climb over racks of old batteries with broken tops full of black goo and pots of paint to watch, fascinated as the curator pulled the levers from above. If an NRM official had seen such a thing they'd have exploded. The locals however ranged from the intensely friendly to the cold and aloof. It might be that some were recent immigrants. There are a lot of 'local' pubs, all empty apart from five or six people who tend to go quiet when someone they don't know walks in. The history and sense of something weird and wonderful makes up for it.

 

I be a Vorest Miner, we blue scars on me vace
Born and bred a Vorrester, an proud ta be thick race
I worked the pits, al or the Dean, Cyannup and Waterloo.
Crump Medda, Strip an At It, Narthern and Eastern too

 

It's bin a rough an dirty life the coal is ard ta win
Me knees is bust me back is bent, me lungs as black as zin
I zwung me pick both night an doy, I worked the twelve inch zeam
An life is very divrent vrom all me childhood dreams

 

When I wuz yung, I roamed the wood's az vree az any breeze
Round Voxes Bridge an Lightmore Tump I'd wander az I pleaze
Down Edges Scowles an up agyun, an round Shakemantles loop
In rain an shine, in wind an snow, to vind me vathers ship

 

Now I'm a mon I as ta work, ta veed me kids an wife
So its down the cage to earn a wage, zurry what a life
We all the years spent underground, I be veelin like a mole
An in me yud the thought rings out, I hates this bloody Coal

 

On Vriday night I comes off zhif, ta get me weekly poy
An then off wum to divvy up, me vittern inta cloy
For if its bin ashart owld wick, there yun much left vor we
An I be vaced we ungry kids, an bread an jam ver tea

 

But if its bin a good owld wick, I gooes off down the pub
I no's me kids be warm an zafe, the pantry's vull ov grub
I has a drink we me owld buts, then its wum across the tump
Its slowly now I wendsme woy, me belly vull ov scrump

 

Vor I be a Vorest Miner, we blue scars on me vace
Barn an bred a Vorrester, an proud to be thick race
I worked the pits all or the Dean, Cyannup and Waterloo
Crump Medda, Strip an At It, Narthern an Eastern too

 

http://www.kenmorse.co.uk/welcome/cameron-riley-johnson/old-forest-words-and-sayings/


http://www.deanforestmiscellany.info/myContents/FODM_Zurreeforesttalk.shtml
 

28 minutes ago, BWsTrains said:

Martin if you're familiar with using basic Excel pls PM me if you'd like a little guidance.

 

Colin

Hi Colin, another gentleman of this parish has sent me an excel spreadsheet already that does amazing things. I thought a program would detract from the feel of things but pressing a button to get a new goods train set out in about 1/100th of a second sure beats the 3 or4  minutes of card drawing and dice rolling.

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59 minutes ago, Martin S-C said:

Hi Colin, another gentleman of this parish has sent me an excel spreadsheet already that does amazing things. I thought a program would detract from the feel of things but pressing a button to get a new goods train set out in about 1/100th of a second sure beats the 3 or4  minutes of card drawing and dice rolling.

Thank Martin,

 

I can guess who!  And a lot better than building one from scratch!

 

Colin

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On 29/07/2019 at 11:54, Martin S-C said:

The John Yates wagon is your basic Dapol 9ft wb one-sided brakes offering.

 

That photo emphasises what a frustratingly near-miss those Dapol wagons are, with their tongue-and-groove boarding. There are so many good things there, by RTR standards, especially below the curb rail - Ellis grease axleboxes, that could be gently improved. (The door looks a little wide and quite how the latches on the top plank are supposed to work when the hinge starps are bolted to the sixth plank is a bit of a puzzle.)

 

On 29/07/2019 at 11:54, Martin S-C said:

Then we have the classic Airfix Broadoak, one of their very early wagons. The wb is a little long and probably there are other errors with this model but I have always liked this livery very much and since its vaguely in the correct region (GWR S Wales) I wanted one.

 

Arrrgh!

 

(Please excuse my pre-Grouping apoplexy.)

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3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Arrrgh!

 

(Please excuse my pre-Grouping apoplexy.)

*raises hand in admittance of his error*

Yes, I know, very post-1923 I am afraid. I just like them so much. I confess they do look odd alongside a rake of 9ft wb one-sided brake vehicles.

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8 minutes ago, Martin S-C said:

Yes, I know, very post-1923 I am afraid. I just like them so much. I confess they do look odd alongside a rake of 9ft wb one-sided brake vehicles.

 

Not very post-1923 either...

 

I have to confess that I do have three of the Mainline CWS wagons - one of which was the first PO wagon I had in my mid-teens, the other two I got cheaply second hand to keep the first company, in a fit of sentimentality.

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We are all sinners to one degree or another. Perhaps if I take heed of the advice from the gathered parishioners I can make efforts to weed out the worst cases of grouping-itis or, worse still, toy-train-philia. I am keen to widen my knowledge of all things pre-1923 and really could use some helpful guidance. I have a huge collection of the various PO wagon books as well as those on the GWR and Midland but when I browse them I tend to look for interesting weathering opportunities and miss the details of things like axleboxes, door catches and hinges, and solebar furniture. I really need a crash course in pre-Great War freight and NPCS rolling stock.

I too was wondering how you'd get the doors open on that Dapol wagon. Would you be able to recommend some small changes that would improve it? I expect your suggestion for getting the best from the Broadoak wagons would be to leave them in their boxes!

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In response to the requests about my operating sessions on this thread have now set up a page about this available at https://myafk.net/setting-up-a-session

 

I don't want to hijack this thread so it might be best to respond on the thread here

 

Retrospective thanks for advice on adding link. Easy when you know how!

 

Ian T

 

Edited by ianathompson
embedding link
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Thank you for that Ian, I shall step over there directly.

You need the code [ url=<insert the code of the page address here> ]<here is where you put some plain text>[ /url ]

 

Without any spaces, or any < >  symbols.

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22 minutes ago, Martin S-C said:

You need the code [ url=<insert the code of the page address here> ]<here is where you put some plain text>[ /url ]

 

Without any spaces, or any < >  symbols.

Or just select the word "here", click on the chain link icon in the toolbar, paste the address into the URL field and click OK.

 

here

 

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On ‎31‎/‎07‎/‎2019 at 02:18, BWsTrains said:

  On ‎31‎/‎07‎/‎2019 at 01:17, Martin S-C said:

Hi Colin, another gentleman of this parish has sent me an excel spreadsheet already that does amazing things. I thought a program would detract from the feel of things but pressing a button to get a new goods train set out in about 1/100th of a second sure beats the 3 or4  minutes of card drawing and dice rolling.

 

Thank Martin,

 

I can guess who!  And a lot better than building one from scratch!

 

Colin

 

I'll 'fess up. It was me. Anyone who guessed wins a prize - your very own air guitar.

 

So as not to hijack this topic I've started one of my own which describes the situation and allows you to download the spreadsheet  and written instructions so  you can have a go yourself. It's here.

 

Have fun with it.

 

Cam

Edited by CameronL
Made a mistake
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